View from the Top

Well, hundreds of stairs later and at least 15 rest stops, we finally get to the last station, the altar and a gorgeous view. Enjoy the pics, cuz I poured my blood sweat and tears to get those for ya.






giant pakil sign.


caretaker












papaya anyone?


famished!



aaand walking down is the best part.




afterwards we dropped by Lucban


had dinner at a cute bossa nova restaurant


mmm rice, it's what's for dinner..

Mt. Ping-as Pt II

The morning light reveals new things...


like this creepy haunted house...


abandoned dinosaur?

Ok, so onto the hiking up a steep road...


resting already... what a great view!


another rest stop. dirt road and rocks now, which is actually better than the wet slippery paved one we were walking on.


oh geez, are we there yet? please tell me we are!




ungraceful trip to the... "bathroom"

NOT FUN


sure it is!


rinsing off before the last leg of the journey


pretty waterfall


no.. not thank you yet.. we just got to the base of the stairs. STAIRS?!

Journey to Mt. Ping-as

Again, I'm sorry for the major delay in all of my picture blogging. Sitting at the comp becomes quite difficult when you're an adventurer like me. Well, actually somehow all my adventures came every weekend this month. I ended up having to play tour guide for some fam so it was also an excuse to go see some places. It's almost the end of January and I'm still on pre- new years pictures.

I was raised as a very... safe child. My fam's not big on strenuous activity, so it's only now that I ended up hanging out with crazy rock climbers and jetsetters. I figured I'd try an easy route before I even attempt to hang out with the big leagues. To help me on this particular trial were KM & Simon. We planned to hang out in the Los Banos area, go to some hot springs and then climb a mountain the next day. So, we left Lucena via a very long jeepney ride. Nothing to note except that KM and I would play pretty eyes with a baby across the jeep and then later on the dad made KM put her spit on the baby to ward off the evil eye? Apparently she'd jinxed the baby and it was feeling bad and that was the only remedy. Hurray for superstitions.

The first day, we tried to get to Mt. Makiling, where UP Los Banos sits. There is supposedly a natural mudsprings there. Unfortunately we got started too late and an old guy met us before we started climbing up. He told us not to go up because there were "holdappers" at night. Since we were two girls and one guy, and it was kinda spooky, we decided to take his advice. We instead went to City of Springs resort. It was equally spooky, but at least a bit safer.




scary hallways





After taking a dip in the warm pools, we had a couple beers. When we got back to the room, we found THIS.


The next morning, the resort didn't seem as scary. There was a gorgeous lakeside view at dawn.